Ball-Peen those hard drives !!!

Kismet

Kismet

Joined
Jan 30, 2002
Messages
7,269
from Web-Tech mag.

Users should pound old hard drives before recycling the bits and pieces, a security analyst warned Monday.

"Remove the disks and crush the cases, making sure that you break or bend the actual platters. Use a hammer," said Richard Stiennon of IT-Harvest.

Stiennon's recommendation was prompted, by BBC reports that Nigerian fraudsters have been buying recycled hard drives from the U.K., then diving into the data in search of usernames and passwords for accessing online bank accounts. According the BBC, drives are sold in the West African country's commercial capital of Lagos for as little as 20 pounds ($37.87). Many of the drives the BBC found in Lagos came from U.K.-based recycling companies.
 
Couple rounds of 7.62mm will do it, too.

"Nigerian Spam" sounds like something... really, really impalatable.


Mike
 
I like to use a maul.

splittingaxe.gif


KLER-POW!

Jake
 
I typically do this with a khukuri or similar object. The rest of the computer often winds up on the block as well...guilt by association, I suppose. It's far easier than removing the thing.

Many thanks to Kismet for providing me with an actual excuse for this behavior. The neighbors were starting to ask difficult questions and now I have the answer. The next time they wonder why I'm smashing computer hardware to bits with edged weapons in my back yard, I will explain to them that the Nigerian fraudsters are making me do it.

:)
 
I think I heard the "official" method that hard drive companies use is a power drill. That was from a news story about a guy who sent his hard drive back for repair and got a new one in return. Then his old hard drive (which was supposed to be destroyed by the manufacturer with the drill) showed up in someone's used computer across the country... with his personal information still intact :eek:.

I bet a good old electromagnet would do the trick too...

Alan
 
I've got three drives right now that I've pasted targets to. Next range trip, they get a few FMJ .40 S&W holes put in them. I get to work on my marksmanship, and get rid of any info they might contain. (Besides, it's FUN)
 
Nooo! The insides of your hard drive has some valuable stuff. Take them apart carefully, sometimes you have to drill the screws out, and pull the magnets from the top and bottom of the read/write armatures. The disc platters make great mirrors, for your shop or throw one in your camping possibles bag for a signal mirror. They are very highly polished, and the center hole works as a sighting hole for the "mirror". Smash the rest if you want. If you keep them and are concerned about security then just wave a heavy magnet over them.

The disc platter spacers make great rings, backing pads, spacers, etc. I keep all the little screws and you never know when they might be useful. I have a collection of the armatures from different technologies. My oldest is from an ancient 1 GB SCSI drive. The rare earth magnets from that one only are monsters, each over 2" across! I use HD magnets in the shop all the time. Tacking notes up on the gun safe or tool cabinet, holding up my Dillon Aero calendar :D, etc., etc.

I buy the rare earth magnets from Veritas to use in wood working projects, but these are just as effective, and even thinner. Just back them with a washer to increase their magnetic pull. You need to often break the magnets off their metal backing pad that surrounds the armature, and sometimes the magnets can fracture. I just use a hammer and very thin strong blade meant for removing molding. and just take them off in one solid piece.

If you guys have HD's and don't want them then send them on to me! I'll wipe them and put 'em to use.

BTW, destroying the drives seems like a poor suggestion anyway. On at least 6 systems that I donated to the local junior high school over a two year period I just booted into DOS and ran the old Norton Wipedisk, which overwrites the FAT and all the sectors multiple times. There are many other utils that do the same thing, including one util I wrote that nukes the master boot record and the next few thousand bytes. It is set up to require a "tell me 3 times" before it executes. There is NOTHING coming off those hard drives when that thing is done, and yet after reformat they are perfectly usable for the next guy. I have that particular util in a read-only folder called TOXICS. (-:

Norm

P.S. Not to mention, but taking stuff like that to the range makes an incredible mess! I took an old answering machine to the range when I got my .45 camp carbine. It took my son and me 30 minutes to clean up about 1000 peices of plastic and metal junk. (It was sure fun though. :D)

And I know no one on this forum would be one of those bottom dwelling types that takes goodies like that to the range, makes a huge mess and then leaves it! :(
 
Norm?

I do not recycle, reuse, or repair computer components. I destroy them. Utterly and completely. I make it as if they never were. If I believed that computers had souls, I would tear them out and consume them before pulverizing their mortal remains into semiconductive refuse and grinding what's left to dust beneath my boots. I'm willing to explain it all but I don't need to explain, do I? Of course not. It's kind of an us vs. them thing, and we're all on the "us" team around here.

(I looked for a way to work Cthulhu into this one but unfortunately, I was not able to. That doesn't matter. Cthulhu is in every thread, whether we know it or not.)
 
Dave Rishar said:
Norm?

I do not recycle, reuse, or repair computer components. I destroy them. Utterly and completely. I make it as if they never were. If I believed that computers had souls, I would tear them out and consume them before pulverizing their mortal remains into semiconductive refuse and grinding what's left to dust beneath my boots. I'm willing to explain it all but I don't need to explain, do I? Of course not. It's kind of an us vs. them thing, and we're all on the "us" team around here.

(I looked for a way to work Cthulhu into this one but unfortunately, I was not able to. That doesn't matter. Cthulhu is in every thread, whether we know it or not.)
Click to expand...

Definitetly appealing. Ever see one of the best movies ever made (and scary accurate) "Office Space" and the printer from Hell? I can see the satisfaction quotient for sure.

But, I prefer to spend 5 minutes nuking the drives, donating them to the school and then taking a pile of $ off my taxes. YMMV. :D

Norm
 
Norm, It sounds good, really. Trouble is, it all sounds good to me. I have so many other salvage jobs around here...my work room is filled with debris. Add a little more? I dunno...the magnents sound appealing.


munk
 
Unfortunately, I tend to lean towards packratting stuff. Granted, I'm now down to one Caravan of belongings, so I my options are open at the moment :D

Magnets, shiny mirrors... hmmm
 
One more reason not to destroy computers or other electronics, with khuks or otherwise (as tempting as it sounds... I'm thinking use the HD disc as a clay pigeon :D): with all the heavy metals and such in them they are essentially toxic waste. Bad to let broken bits out and about, bad to expose yourself to while cleaning them up. :(
 
Man, I've done that for the fun of it before, but I never knew it was actually a good idea! Cool.

Actually, when I sold my last computer, I got a program call something like "boot-and-nuke" that cleaned your hard drive. The idea is that stuff that you delete from your hard drive is really all still there for somebody who knows how to get it. It only truly goes away if it's all written over. So you burn the program to a CD or floppy, then you boot your computer with it. After many explicit warnings, it proceeds to trash every inch of data on your hard drive several times, overwriting to DoD specifications. Not even your operating system survives. Nothing, nada, nuked!

Then you just reinstall the OS and you're set. Gives you a feeling of security, while giving you the nerdy thrill of electronically ball-peening your hard drive, while keeping it intact for resale! Gotta love money. :)

Chris
 
Chris, I like to ACTUALLY nuke mine. It really hurts the resale value, but if you're the type that turns lemons into lemonade it makes a humdinger of a night light....just be sure to roll to your other side halfway through the night to even your tan;)

jake
 
Yea, you gotta get those magnets out first, but then you've gotta destroy the plattens. Those magnets are damn cool.
 
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